Vanessa nodded desperately and Dr. Phalanx cradled the baby once again.
“You just saved some poor nurse from having to wipe her ass every day until death, well done.”
He sat up straight.
“What was I talking about? Oh yes, manipulation. A woman’s body needs to be manipulated to coincide with man’s desires. Otherwise, in her original state, she is simply a walking mistake. god’s mistake. What I’m doing here is working to fix those mistakes. Giving women their purpose back.”
He sat and pondered for a moment.
“Look at it this way, if a woman bends over in the forest and nobody is around to stare at her arse, does her arse still exist?”
He sat there and stared into the distance for some time. Vanessa remained still, fearful of the doctor, as she finally understood just how crazy he was.
Dr. Phalanx stood up from the chair and placed Heather onto a nearby tray.
“When you’ve finished making Vanessa pretty, prep her for surgery.”
He wheeled the tray out of the room, the baby writhed, cold on the mirrored surface like a specimen before dissection.
The Mexican spent the rest of the afternoon making Vanessa blonde.
Chapter 12
Vanessa woke to the sound of dripping. The room was the same one she’d been sleeping in for several nights. The damp and grim industrial interior had begun to attune to her idea of a home.
Her arms and legs weren’t strapped to the bed and she slowly made the effort to get up. She felt a wave of dizziness from the residual effects of the drugs she’d been fed. She took slow steps towards the door and hugged the doorframe. Peering around the corner she saw a hall with two other rooms and an exit at the far end.
She walked past the rooms, both dark inside, and went to the end of the hall. The exit was locked. By the door there was a small table and a chair. On the table lay an ashtray and a lighter. She grabbed the lighter and went back down the hall to one of the other rooms and went inside and lit it. The first room was much the same as her own: bed, toilet, no windows or doors. She left and went across the hall to the other. It was much larger and littered with filthy white linen piled up all over the floor, mounds of it casting shadows of mangled beasts.
Something moved under a blanket. Vanessa froze. She directed the light towards the thing and the flame blew out. She flicked it back on frantically. Her panting caused the flame to waver.
“Who’s there?” she said.
The blankets moved again. She stepped closer towards it, thinking maybe they’d put Heather in there.
“Heather?”
A small hand pulled back a sheet. Wet, dirty flesh tones were visible in the dim. Vanessa’s heart was beating out of her chest, terrified by what strange atrocity might be nearby.
The thing’s face birthed from the shroud of material, eyes black and glazed, wincing at the light, trying to focus on Vanessa.
“Can you help me?” the girl asked.
Vanessa came over to her and pulled back more of the sheets. The girl’s breasts were inflated so dramatically that she didn’t have the strength to stand. Her lips were so fat she could barely open her mouth. Small holes on either side of her top and bottom lips bled yellow pus that smelled of cat’s piss, crusted like dried remains of macaroni and cheese.
“What’s your name?” Vanessa asked.
“Tiny,” the girl said in a squeaky voice.
“Tiny, I’m going to help you.”
Vanessa cleared away some of the sheets restricting Tiny’s legs and saw that her genitals were horribly mutilated, like mince meat pushed through the opening of a handbag. Below the mess of her vagina lay a puddle of black, watery feces. Vanessa pulled her up out of the mess, almost vomiting from the roused stench. She held the girl’s boobs close to her for support, cradling Tiny’s head on her shoulder.
“I’m very hungry,” Tiny said.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been here a while.”
“Do you have any family?”
“I’m good at sex.”
Tiny gulped on the side of Vanessa’s face, the expanse of her mouth was large enough to almost engulf her head entirely. Vanessa felt warmth and an intense sucking. She didn’t understand what Tiny was doing until she broke her head free and let Tiny fall to the ground. The girl slithered across the floor towards her. Vanessa backed away and tripped on a pile of linen, falling back and losing the flame. She grabbed at the ground beside her, desperately feeling for the lighter. She lit it again as Tiny crawled over the top of her with an enormous gaping mouth, flicking a forked tongue in circles, deep in the depths of her wet and black maw. Her eyes rolled back as she lowered her head dumbly over Vanessa’s face, weighing down her prey with her mammoth boobs, a tonne each. Vanessa brought the lighter up to the top of Tiny’s gums and burnt the inside of her mouth. Tiny slammed her jaw shut, cupped her mouth and slid away leaving black entrails of slime discharging from her anus. Vanessa ran back into the hall and went for the exit again, rattling the knob. She heard her pursuer coming after her. Tiny’s hands emerged from the room, gripping the doorframe. Both arms pulled her wet mass into the hall and she turned her body towards Vanessa as if smelling her in the air.. The monster lurched forward. Vanessa picked up the chair and shielded herself, jabbing at Tiny with the four small legs.
“Stay away from me,” she shrieked.
The thing came at her, in slow and blind lunges. Vanessa saw the opportunity and jammed the chair legs into the expanse of Tiny’s mouth. Tiny adjusted her jaw to fit the thing in and began to gulp down the chair. It didn’t get far before the legs halted at the entrance of her chest and the pressure began to rip her skin. Blood spilled from internal puncturing in Tiny’s neck and she gargled a scream, her voice box so distorted she no longer sounded human. Tiny thrashed around bleeding to death and Vanessa weaved around her and retreated back to her room. She sat in a ball on the corner of her bed, holding out the lighter and flicking it on every ten seconds, terrified that Tiny, or perhaps something else, would eventually appear in the doorway. Tiny’s screams finally stopped and Vanessa calmed herself enough to sleep again.
Chapter 13
When Vanessa woke, two men were standing over her bed. One held her down as the other gagged and blindfolded her. They grabbed her by the hands and legs and strapped her down to a nearby stretcher and wheeled her into the corridor. She could smell Tiny’s remains in the hall as she passed and could hear the men kicking her body aside.
After a short journey she heard a door close behind her and the blindfold was taken off. She was in an operating room. The walls were made of white sheets stretched over metal frames, shadows of other people passed behind them. Dr. Phalanx was there with two assistants, including Dr. Ferngehn. The stretcher was placed in the middle of the room and Dr. Ferngehn clamped the wheels. He removed the sheets from over her body and peeled off her underwear and bra. Her cooked pigment looked alien to her against the white of the sheets. Her nipples, once pink and large, were now shrunken and brown. She was always warm. She could see what the doctor was doing to her, turning her into the common man’s ideal woman: a porn star. She didn’t know how snakes fit into it though. Her guess was influenced heavily by her encounter with Tiny. They were going to do terrible things to her jaw.
